The Social Butterfly Operation
by Voidhunter
Summary: As the crew grows even more tired of each other's company, they decide to go out and socialize a bit more...which leads to some very...different situations. (Sequel to my previous story, "Come on Carolina", though it's not closely linked).
1. Chapter 1

As always, the sun shined mercilessly down onto the canyon. The Reds and Blues were currently bickering over a pile of trash, that a civilian ship had dumped on the assumption that the canyon was unusable.

"Look," Simmons started, trying to get the attention of the others. "I'm clearly the most computer savy person here, and so I should get all the computer parts." His helmet tinged, the sound of the newly added 'texting' app that was installed in all of their helmets. It was from Lopez, with nothing but two emojis; a cow, and the poop emoji.  
Lopez had reverted to texting rather than attempting to communicate verbally with any of them.

"THESE. ARE. MINE!" Donut loudly proclaimed, holding up a set of violet and gold trimmed curtains. He waited for a few seconds, and realized no one was going to oppose his statement.  
Caboose jumped to the top of the pile and help up an assault rifle. "I FOUND THIS! IT'S SO COOL!"

"Caboose, that's YOUR rifle, you already had that" Church attempted to correct him from Tucker's helmet, but to no use.

"I'm going to go show Wash and Carolina! This is the best discovery EVER! Of all time!" Caboose quickly sprinted to blue base.  
Tucker and Grif were looking through a stack of miscellaneous newspapers, magazines, and papers. Apparently they found a coupon to a pizza joint on the other side of the planet, and were hoping to score something else.

"Hey, how about you guys use these parts to build a body for me?" Church asked.

"Yeah, I'm sick of hearing his complaining about my helmet" Tucker added.  
Sarge chuckled and cocked his shotgun.

"Nice try Blue, but this stuff clearly belongs to us. You would have to pay for a body"

"Oh come on, last time you guys gave us a body, it blew up. I think you owe us one- Wait, this doesn't belong to _you,_ it belongs to _us_." Church countered

"In what world? The stuff is on THIS side of THAT rock, which marks the center of the canyon!"

** Blue Base**

"Okay Caboose, you found weapons in the pile?" Wash asked slowly, to make sure he was understanding properly.

"No, just this one!" Caboose replied, holding the assault rifle up proudly.

"Caboose...you do realize that's...your rifle...right?" Wash asked again.

"Oh my god. By now I should be used to it, but I'm still astounded on how dumb you guys are." Carolina said tiredly, with dark rings under her eyes. She currently had her helmet off, and was sipping a cup of hot coffee.

"Carolina! Did you see what I found?" Caboose asked enthusiastically.

"Yeah, great job Caboose. I'm proud. Go play." She answered and rubbed her forehead. Caboose, surprisingly, turned around and ran back to the pile.

"How...how did you get him to go away?" Wash asked with a confused expression.

"I realized that giving him slight amounts of positive attention makes him go away faster than a shock-stick." She said, shrugging. Wash winced at the memory of the shock-stick incident. A long moment of silence followed by shouting came from the canyon.

"I should probably go divide the stuff up before they start shooting at each other." Wash said with a heavy sigh.

* * *

Sorry guys for such a long gap in my story writing! And I also apologize for such a short chapter for this new story, I've been contemplating putting a story up for quite some time. I've wrote a bunch, and then just never continued. I figured by putting up a chapter, even a short one like this, would be motivation to write more. Thanks for your patience! I hope you enjoy, please give me feed back!


	2. Rising tension

"Nonsense! The only reason you don't want us to have this, is because you fear our limitless ambition, and our unmatched intelligence!" Sarge said, directly into Washington's face.

"First off, we're gonna have a talk about personal space-" Wash began, though was quickly interrupted by Grif

"Thank god! See Donut? I'm not the only one here who thinks we need more personal space!"

"Oh come on, it wasn't that bad!" Donut protested

"Dude. There's a line, and you crossed it!"

"ANYWAYS," Wash cut in to finish his sentence, "Sarge, your...questionable intelligence or occasional ambition, have nothing to do with it. I simply feel that it serves no purpose, and would only waste time."

"What? It would greatly increase our moral, not to mention, it would upgrade our already amazing military hardware!" Sarge retorted.

"Yeah, not to mention we love wasting time. If we were a house, that would be somewhere in the motto." Simmons added.

"I think it'd actually be pretty cool. Also.. chicks dig my amazing military hardware. Bow chicka bow wow" Tucker said, earning a few moments of irritated silence. Wash let out a heavy sigh.

"Fine, you can install it on the Warthog, AFTER you sort through this stuff, and give me a detailed list of the items. This means ALL of you! I don't want you to make Lopez do all the work again, and end up trying to translate Spanish all night." They all gave Wash a dirty look that you could practically see through the helmet. The only sound made was the bubble notification, Lopez had sent a thumbs up emoji to the entire group. Wash looked around at the group and realized just how tired everyone was of each others company. He himself was on the verge of strangling Sarge.

"And..." He followed "If you get this all sorted...quickly and without complaining...we can call in a vacation and go to one of the bigger cities. We could all use a break from each other"  
They all gave Wash a blank stare as if they didn't believe him. After a few moments they realized he wasn't joking, and they quickly turned to begin sorting out the pile.

**Several hours later**

Wash stared at a large list of all the items dumped. Turns out the majority was still usable, and only a tiny portion was actually trash.

"You..." He began, still shocked at their efficiency, "You all did this...that fast?" Wash asked.

"Yep! They were all like, 'Caboose! take all the stuff, and put it in different piles, and we'll give you lemonade!'...and then they drank all the lemonade while they were watching...but it was still fun!" Caboose responded cheerfully. Wash immediately gave the rest a very, very dirty look.

"20 laps around the canyon for all of you, except Caboose!" He ordered sharply.

"He moved the stuff, but Simmons and I are the ones who made the list!" Donut responded.

"Me vi obligado a añadir las llantas" Lopez added.

"llantas? Doesn't that mean 'tires'? Don't tell me you made Lopez install those stupid things while you sat around and drank lemonade" Wash asked Sarge, who in turn, quickly stepped very close to Wash.

"Well of course I did! No sense in wasting my time! And now we have a superior warthog to yours! Suck it, blue."  
Wash finally lost his patience, he pushed Sarge back so that he wasn't in his personal space and took a deep breath.

"GOD DAMMIT! IT'S LIKE YOU PEOPLE CANNOT PHYSICALLY FUNCTION IN A SOCIAL SETTING! LET ALONE A MILITARY ONE! EVERYONE PACK UP, WE ARE GOING INTO THE CITY, AND WE'RE NOT LEAVING UNTIL EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU CAN ACT LIKE AN ADULT!"

"Woohoo!" Grif responded, unaffected by Wash's outburst.

"THIS IS _NOT_ GOING TO BE YOUR FUN TIME! I AM IN CHARGE, IT'S GOING TO BE AN OPERATION, NOT A VACATION!" Wash yelled again.  
Carolina rushed out of blue base to see what the source of the noise was.

"Wash, everything okay?" She asked. He shot her a look.

"Carolina! You're part of this!" He snapped.

"Excuse me? What did _I_ do?"

"You stay up all night, you refuse to have any actual interaction with anyone, other than Caboose, and you...!" He paused to try and think of something else, his momentum lost.

"Wash. I think you're stepping out of your place." She said through clenched teeth.  
Before he could respond, Caboose set a stool down, and then climbed on top of it to get their attention.

"I think Agent Washingbuns is right..you know...maybe we have been a little..difficult to handle...and he's tried to hold it together all by himself...so...maybe he's a little tense, and you know...kinda...scary when he shouts...but we all need a little break from each other...so..." Caboose trailed off. They waited for him to finish, but he finally hopped off the stool without another word.

"Heh...Agent Washingbuns...that's a good one." Grif finally added.

"Alright, everyone heard him, pack up. You all need to relearn some social skills." Carolina stated, purposely excluding herself from the sentence. With a grumble, they all headed to grab their stuff to begin their operation.

* * *

Again, sorry for a short chapter! Please review!


End file.
